What is DX? Creating Great Developer Experience: Tips from the Experts | Emily Freeman

My notes & takeaways (8)

Evolution is not a straight line
[In tech], we have a culture that takes pride in being able to do the hard things, instead of making the hard things easy.
Two types of DX: Internal and External (when your users are developers). Internal is focused on productivity. External is focused on Usability.
Joy is the flame of creativity. (…) happy developers are more creative and inventive.

4 key behaviors:

  • Expected
    • does it do what it is supposed to do?
    • does it follow standards?
  • Consistent
    • more important then we think
    • speaks both to the resiliency of the product and frequency of changes
    • users will hate constant change
  • Quick
    • if your product becomes the bottleneck, they’ll hate it
    • optimize to provide the developer the fastest path forward
  • Intuitive
    • easy to navigate and search,
    • expected docs in place
    • unintuitive interfaces and flows bring annoyances
  • Great DX is architected and though through from the start
  • Great DX is Simple - options are useful, but decision fatigue is a problem
  • Great DX is Beautiful
  • Great DX is Documented

On Measuring Developer Experience

  • How quickly is someone able to walk through the path of Success
  • MTTS : mean time to Success

The strong, happy path / golden path requires you to have an opinion of how work/tasks should be done.

The more impactful changes (…) the changes that take a look at everyday items and experiences and improves them. When it comes to Developer experience, those are the changes that have biggest impact, not just on developer joy but on your bottom line.